Bangladesh Govt Forms Inter-Ministerial Taskforce to Deregulate Business: 90-Day Mandate

Dhaka, August 11, 2026 — The Cabinet Division on Monday issued a notification forming an 18-member inter-ministerial taskforce to identify, review and recommend the abolition or simplification of business regulations that have outlived their purpose — the most concrete deregulation initiative since the political transition of August 2024 and one that industry leaders have been demanding for years.

🏛️ The Taskforce Composition

The taskforce, chaired by Senior Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce Mohammad Mejbahuddin, includes:

• 👥 Cabinet Division — Joint Secretary (Coordination) — member-secretary
• 👥 Ministry of Industries — Secretary
• 👥 Ministry of Textiles and Jute — Secretary
• 👥 Ministry of Agriculture — Secretary
• 👥 National Board of Revenue (NBR) — Chairman
• 👥 Bangladesh Bank — Deputy Governor (Financial Inclusion)
• 👥 BIDA — Executive Chairman
• 👥 BEZA — Executive Chairman
• 👥 BEPZA — Executive Chairman
• 👥 BSCIC — Chairman
• 👥 ICT Division — Secretary
• 👥 Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change — Secretary
• 👥 FBCCI — President or designated Vice President
• 👥 BGMEA — President or designated Vice President
• 👥 BKMEA — Executive President
• 👥 BAPI — President
• 👥 BCMEA — President
• 👥 e-CAB — President

The notification, signed by Cabinet Secretary Md. Khondker Showkat Hossain, specifies that the taskforce has a 90-day mandate to produce a binding deregulation list, with the first meeting scheduled for August 18 at the Bangladesh Secretariat.

📋 The Mandate: Five Specific Tasks

The notification lists five specific tasks the taskforce must complete within 90 days:

• ✅ Inventory of business regulations: Compile a complete list of all licences, approvals, permissions, registrations and renewals required to start and operate a business in Bangladesh, across all sectors. The inventory is to be published on a public portal
• ✅ Obsolescence review: Identify regulations that have outlived their original purpose, are duplicated across agencies, or impose costs disproportionate to their regulatory benefit. Apply a sunset-clause principle — if a regulation cannot be justified afresh, it should be abolished
• ✅ Process simplification: Recommend consolidation of multi-step approvals into single-window processes, with deemed-approval provisions where statutory timelines are not met
• ✅ Digital-first mandate: Recommend which remaining approvals can be moved entirely online by December 2027, with mandatory digital submission, processing and issuance
• ✅ Implementation roadmap: Produce a binding deregulation roadmap specifying which regulations will be abolished by when, which agencies are responsible, and what monitoring mechanism will verify compliance

📊 The Numbers Driving the Move

The taskforce formation responds to a body of evidence that has been accumulating for years:

• 📈 39+ approvals to open a factory: A BIDA mapping exercise in May 2026 documented 39 distinct approvals required from 14 different agencies before a mid-sized manufacturing unit can begin commercial operations
• 📈 234-day average setup time: World Bank Doing Business reform tracking data (carried forward by BIDA after the WB discontinued the index) shows Bangladesh still requires 234 days on average to set up a manufacturing unit, compared to 87 days in Vietnam, 65 days in India and 42 days in Malaysia
• 📈 84 obsolete licences identified: The FBCCI has submitted a list of 84 licences that are nominally still required but have no current regulatory function — including a jute baling licence, a ballpoint pen assembly licence, and a handloom registration that was rendered obsolete by the abolition of the handloom subsidy in 1998
• 📈 $2.3 billion FDI in FY26: Bangladesh attracted only $2.3 billion in FDI in FY26, less than half the government’s $5 billion target and a fraction of Vietnam’s $18.4 billion or India’s $28.2 billion
• 📈 168th rank (legacy): Bangladesh was ranked 168th out of 190 economies in the last World Bank Doing Business 2020 report — and the underlying indicators have not improved materially since

💬 Commerce Minister’s Statement

Commerce Minister Khandaker Abdul Muktadir, addressing a press conference at the Ministry on August 10 evening, said: “For too long, Bangladesh’s businesses have been suffocated by regulations that exist only because no one has had the courage to abolish them. This taskforce has a clear 90-day mandate to identify and recommend the abolition of those regulations. The Cabinet will act on its recommendations within a further 60 days. There will be no referral back to line ministries for further review. The recommendations will be implemented.”

The Minister also addressed the political challenge: “Many of these regulations exist because someone, somewhere, benefits from the licence fee, the inspection visit or the informal facilitation payment. Those interests will resist. We have the political authority to override that resistance. The Prime Minister has personally approved this initiative.”

🤝 Industry Response

The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) welcomed the taskforce as a “long-overdue” intervention. “We have been asking for this since 2018. The previous reform bodies — the Better Business Forum, BUILD, the PM’s Ease of Doing Business Committee — all produced good recommendations but had no implementation authority,” said an FBCCI spokesperson. “What is different this time is that the taskforce has a binding 90-day mandate, and the Minister has explicitly committed to implementing the recommendations without referring them back to line ministries.”

BGMEA President Mahmud Hasan Khan (Babu) said the taskforce should prioritise three specific RMG-sector reforms: consolidation of factory inspection (currently undertaken separately by DIFE, Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments; the Fire Service and Civil Defence; and BEPZA where applicable); abolition of duplicate boiler inspection (currently done by both the Chief Inspector of Boilers and BEPZA in economic zones); and digital-first processing of all bond licence renewals.

BAPI President Abdul Muktadir (no relation to the Commerce Minister) called for abolition of the 18 separate licences required to import active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), excipients and packaging materials, and consolidation into a single BAPI-endorsed bulk-import permit.

e-CAB President Shomi Kaiser pressed for regulatory clarity on cross-border e-commerce, including a simplified export licence for digital goods and services and a presumptive tax regime for freelance creators earning foreign exchange.

🌏 The International Angle

The taskforce formation has been welcomed by development partners. The World Bank’s Country Director for Bangladesh said in a statement: “This is the most concrete deregulation initiative we have seen in Bangladesh in a decade. The 90-day mandate, the inter-ministerial composition and the explicit commitment to implement are exactly what was missing from previous reform efforts.”

The IMF, in a separate statement, noted that the taskforce addresses one of the structural benchmarks under the Extended Credit Facility — namely, “measurable improvement in the regulatory environment for private investment.” The next IMF review, scheduled for October 2026, will assess whether the taskforce has delivered its 90-day output.

The Asian Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank have both offered technical assistance to support the taskforce, including regulatory impact assessment (RIA) training, comparator-country benchmarking and the design of the digital deregulation portal.

📋 The Implementation Architecture

To ensure the taskforce’s recommendations are actually implemented, the notification specifies the following architecture:

• 🎯 Cabinet Committee on Deregulation: A new Cabinet sub-committee, chaired by the Prime Minister or her designated senior Minister, will receive the taskforce’s recommendations and approve them within 60 days of receipt
• 🎯 Implementation Secretariat: A dedicated unit within the Cabinet Division, staffed by 12 officials seconded from BIDA, NBR, BB and the ICT Division, will monitor implementation of approved deregulation measures
• 🎯 Public dashboard: A real-time digital dashboard, hosted on the Cabinet Division website, will track the status of each regulation — identified for abolition, approved for abolition, gazetted, and confirmed abolished on the ground
• 🎯 Third-party verification: The BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) has been engaged as an independent verifier, with a mandate to interview businesses, conduct mystery-shopper audits and publish a quarterly verification report
• 🎯 Sunset clause on the taskforce itself: If the taskforce does not produce its deregulation list within 90 days, it will automatically dissolve — preventing it from becoming another permanent committee

🌏 The LDC Graduation Connection

The deregulation push is also explicitly tied to LDC graduation, scheduled for November 2026. With the loss of EU EBA preferences, Bangladesh will face a 12.1 per cent average tariff on apparel exports to the EU — a cost that, on current volumes, would total $4.2 billion annually. To remain competitive, Bangladesh must reduce its internal cost of doing business by at least 8–10 per cent, of which regulatory simplification is the single largest available lever.

The Ministry of Commerce estimates that comprehensive deregulation could reduce the average factory setup cost by Tk 4.6 lakh per facility, reduce setup time by 90 days, and lower ongoing annual compliance costs by 1.2–1.8 per cent of turnover for the average manufacturer. Applied across the formal manufacturing sector, this represents a productivity gain of $1.4–$1.8 billion annually — significant headroom that the country has been leaving on the table.

✅ What Comes Next

The taskforce will hold its inaugural meeting on August 18, 2026, where it will adopt its terms of reference, confirm the working methodology and assign sectoral sub-groups. Sub-group leads will be drawn from FBCCI, BGMEA, BKMEA, BAPI, BCMEA and e-CAB. The taskforce is scheduled to deliver its deregulation list by November 16, 2026 — just five days after the LDC graduation date — and the Cabinet Committee on Deregulation is to approve the list by January 15, 2027. Implementation of approved abolition measures is targeted to begin by February 1, 2027.

For Bangladesh’s 12,000+ formal manufacturers, 6+ million RMG workers, 200,000+ SMEs and the foreign investors evaluating Bangladesh as a destination, the next 90 days will be a defining test. The taskforce has the mandate, the composition, the timeline and the political backing to deliver. Whether it can succeed where seven previous reform bodies have stalled will determine whether Bangladesh’s next decade of growth is constrained by its own bureaucracy or liberated by its reform.